A few more armorials online (Mandragore database)

The Mandragore database of the Bibliothèque national in Paris (http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp) allows one to search images of the BnF’s illuminated manuscripts. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this also brings to light a rather larger number of heraldic images (some 10,000 images are tagged ‘armoiries’) and at least a few armorials: 18 manuscripts in the database have been described as armorials (i.e. have the word ‘armorial’ in the modern title). Here’s a list:

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Thanks for the list, they are always a good start for surveys -and one should go to Gallica for actual verification. In any case 7 of the manuscripts are of knights of the Round Table as published by Michel Pastoureau (BA ms.5024; BnF fr.1435-1438, fr.12597, fr.14357) and fr.24381 is the Le Jouvencel. It could be interesting to look at the remaining ones.

Yes, Mandragore is very old and old-fashioned, and indeed there are (by now) often better scans around – though Gallica has its own problems with metadata, of course. And yes, full manuscripts, and yes, links to individual images but no, no permalinks.
All in all, I assume and indeed hope that Mandragore will be replaced, but still see it as useful.

Thank you, Christof, for this new blogpost. Does Mandragore also provide persistent links? And do they feature images of the whole manuscript? By the way, I think this database will be replaced, in the long term, by a new system. Mandragore dates back to the time when you had to by high resolution images, thus the low quality. It often is doubled now by Gallica. So, if you find interesting images on Mandragore, it’s worth to check Gallica for better images.

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The collaborative blog Heraldica Nova is an initiative of the Dilthey-Project ‘Die Performanz der Wappen’ (University of Münster) which aims to study medieval and early modern heraldry from the perspective of cultural history. Read more ...